LEPIDOPTEROLOGICAL NOTES FROM ORTA IN PIEDMONT. 325 
a purpose, and suggest the possibilities of a district to those who are 
meditating a visit, If then I may be allowed to aim at nothing higher 
than a hasty and very incomplete account of the butterflies which came 
in my way, I am glad to make an effort to relate my experiences, after 
arriving at Orta, late in the evening of May 11th, at the Hotel 
Belvéderé on the summit of Sacro Monte. We had expected great 
things, and to find the insect fauna much more unlike our Swiss 
catalogue than proved to be actually the case. Though nature was 
still in its spring attire and the pheasant-eyed narcissus filled all the 
meadows, it was too late for many of the earler things. Iam not now 
to write of flowers, but it is impossible to pass over without a word of 
grateful recollection, the exquisite display in the fields and woods, and 
also in the gardens, of the most luxuriant growth it is possible to 
conceive. Tixcept where the vine was cultivated, the Spanish chestnut 
reigned almost alone, but, whatever its merits, I do not think it is pro- 
ductive of many good insects, especially in the carlier part of the year. On 
the Sacro Monte there is a wood of very fine pines with a mixture of 
beech and oak and a grand row of clipped hornbeam, forming an avenue 
up the main ascent. Of course, though Orta was our temporary home, 
many expeditions were made to neighbouring places, as Valle Strona, 
Val Anzasca, and Crevola, and as far as possible, without overburdening 
my notes with localities and dates, I will notice what captures or 
observations refer rather to these places than to Orta. 
The Sacro Monteitself, a sort of small private elevated park attached 
to the hotel, is excellent ground, but the best places in the immediate 
neighbourhood, so far as I learned to know them, were, first, about a - 
mile below Orta, just over the railway on the road to Carcegna, and, 
secondly, in the valley behind the viaduct at Pettenasco. These three places 
had between them, more or less abundantly, every species, except Liby- 
thea celtis, which I took, unless it may be Argynnis var. cleodova. But as 
I neglected these spots for more distant rambles towards the end of 
our stay, A. var. cleodoxa and many more things with which I did not meet 
may be there. With this preface I will plunge at once into a detailed 
list of what I saw. 
Huspreripes.—Spilothyrus althacae was generally distributed in the 
locality and more particularly in the Strona valley. It isa vexatiously 
difficult insect to secure. SS. lavaterae was very fine in most places 
towards the end of our stay. Syrichthus carthamt fairly abundant, and 
quite ordinary in form; S. fritillwm ? var. alveus, I think, was present at 
Orta; S. sao was fine but not common; S. malvaec, abundant; Nisoniades 
tayes, more or less generally distributed, and very common at Varallo; 
Thymelicus thaumas, and Pamphila sylvanus, abundant, but for P. comma 
we were, I suspect, tooearly. In the Anzasca valley I took one Cartero- 
cephalus palaemon, a very dark and dingy form. 
Lycazyipes.—Among the blues I had hoped for great sport, and 
many new forms, but results led to the opinion that the Rhone valley 
is much more interesting in this respect, but better things would have 
been done no doubt a month later. My first anxiety was to obtain 
Polyommatus orion; L found the first on May 16th, about two milesup the 
Val Anzasca, but by no means in good condition; it appears, however, 
to have a continuous succession of emergences, and from first to last 
I managed to get together a fairly long series of good specimens—but 
all very much smaller than some from Crevola, taken by a friend in 
